From: Blunderov (squooker@mweb.co.za)
Date: Sat May 22 2004 - 13:33:35 MDT
[Blunderov] Even more visual horror is leaking out of the Abu Ghraib prison
and evidence is beginning to accumulate that Rumsfeld's hands are not clean.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=523724
<excerpt>
Compelling evidence is emerging that responsibility for the abuse goes right
to the Pentagon, where an ultra-secret "black operation" was set up to run
the interrogation process. This unit, under the direction of Stephen
Cambone, under-secretary of defence for intelligence, reportedly used
theories developed by an academic to guide the torture of the detainees.
The book, The Arab Mind by the late cultural anthropologist Raphael Patai,
includes a 25-page chapter on Arabs and sex, stating that the biggest
weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation. Patai's book was described by
The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh as providing an intellectual and practical
underpinning of the culture of torture at Abu Ghraib.
</excerpt>
<excerpt>
Mr Rumsfeld is fighting for his political life. The New Yorker report
suggests he approved the covert operation, to which he appointed Dr Cambone
as leader in order to obtain fast, "actionable" intelligence in pursuit of
Mr Bush's "war on terror". The pressure to obtain this information - and the
increasingly important role of the army's military intelligence soldiers and
civilian interrogators - grew as the Iraqi insurgency against US forces
developed.
</excerpt>
All that aside, something else is puzzling me. The sheer volume of material
emerging from Abu Ghraib. I have read accounts of 1800 images and videos
besides. In 3 or 4 months? The only thing that I can think of to account for
this is that perhaps these materials were used to intimidate other
prisoners.
(Either that or some sort of virulent photographic meme ran like wildfire
through the guards which seems, well, unlikely.)
I wondered whether perhaps I had underestimated the volume of material that
digital technology makes possible but if I understand matters aright, all
these images, or at least most of them, are of seperate incidents.
And the cameras seem always to have been there to record them.
Thoughts? Links? What am I missing here?
Best Regards.
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